Phase noise is one of the main Radio Frequency (RF) distortion factors limiting high-throughput transmission of wireless communication systems operating at high carrier frequency, e.g., 60 Gigahertz (GHz).
The phase noise represents random phase modulation of the carrier frequency. The phase noise is caused by local oscillator instability and multiple carrier frequency transformations in a RF front-end chain, which may be included in a receiver and/or a transmitter.
A wireless communication system implementing an Orthogonal-Frequency-Division-Multiplexing (OFDM) communication scheme with high throughput may be sensitive to phase noise impairments of OFDM communication signals, when using high order modulations, e.g., 16 Quadrature-Amplitude-Modulation (QAM) or 64 QAM.
The current solutions to correct the phase error are based on receiver techniques configured to apply correction of common phase error by using pilot signals, or by a compensation, which may apply more advanced Decision Aided (DA) schemes. The current solutions have limitations, which may not be suitable for OFDM communication scheme with high throughput. For example, the first solution only corrects common phase error and does not compensate Inter Carrier Interference (ICI). The second solution allows estimating the ICI, but has high implementation complexity that often limits its realization in practical high throughput devices.